


Cut Close

by MooseFeels



Series: Five for Fifteen Hundred [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Drowning, Free Will, Human Sacrifice, Minor Character Death, Pagan Gods, Suicide, major character death but it's okay i promise, pre-Dean/Castiel - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-27
Updated: 2014-02-27
Packaged: 2018-01-14 00:27:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1245880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel was born to die for the good of the village.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cut Close

The field is rich with golden grain. The trees ahead are dark with leaves. The orchards behind him are heavy with fruit. The larders will be filled. So much bounty, they tell him, and he will bring more.

They wrap him in a dark shroud. His mother wove it. Part of the pact. The ritual. The story.

She wept every day she went to the loom.

Seventeen winters. Castiel has lived for seventeen winters. He was not born to live to see an eighteenth.

When she finished it, his mother hung herself from the broken tower deep in the woods, by a skein of deep blue rope. It formed a fine necklace for her when she was burned upon the pyre. The only things that remained after she was burnt were scorched chunks of gold, what had once been the clips that pulled her hair away from her face.

That was three days ago. Now he holds those rough lumps of unfinished gold in his hands as Naomi pulls the shroud from the long cedar box and wraps him in it slowly.

It is as dark as his hair and heavy. The netting and lace of it is stretched by the stones wound into the bottom of it. It drapes over his shoulders and down to his feet, wrapped such that his chest is left bare and his legs are covered. The darkness of it makes him look pale, even though he grew up working these fields. Picking these apples, becoming acquainted with the harvest he was born to bring back.

Now he will die.

“You are very strong,” Naomi says. Her voice is cold. Firm. She has always been so, since Castiel could remember her. “Your mother raised you well. A tragedy she was not as strong as you.”

He could ruin it all now, he thinks. He could take the knife from her belt and plunge it into his heart. He could kill her, leaving his hands unclean. He bite his mouth and hands in the water, not dying a bloodless death. He could spit the draught of paralytic tea back into her face. He could do so many things. He could punish them all, for the things Naomi has said and done, all of her slights and crimes against Castiel and his mother, selecting him as feast of the gods, for one. Sending his father into exile as another.

He will not, though, for even for all of Naomi’s faults he loves others in the village. He wants them to prosper. He wants the grain to grow heavy and golden and bright. Wants the trees rich with fruit. Wants the hearths warm and the rivers heavy with fish.

This is perhaps Naomi’s biggest error, telling him that what he must do was not a choice.

It has always been a choice. One he will gladly take of his own free will.

Every mother in the village grips her child tight as Castiel walks by. They still manage to throw the flowers under his feet, flowers and leaves.

He is holy now. To step onto the dirt would leave him sullied, would change the wind and the rain and would break the grain.

There are no thorns.

They wove him a crown of silver, dotted with points of crystal like stars. They have been making it for him since he was born. All of these fine vestments that he will only wear once.

Naomi wears a white gown as she stands by the bankside. Her brown hair is woven into elaborate braids. The horn of draught is heavy in her hands.

There are no words now. He takes it from her and drinks ever bitter drop.

Suddenly he is very heavy and very distant. The world is very quiet and very still. It is still as every hand in the village reaches out to pick him up, reaches out and lays him in the water.

The shroud billows about him like dark ink. He is so heavy. He is so heavy and the drowning pool is so deep, full of tall water ferns and smooth stones. He sinks and sinks and sinks, cold and wet and finished. This was his purpose. He has provided. He has done for his village all he could. And now he can rest.

He vomits when he comes to. Steady hands hold him upright, pulling his shoulders back and clearing his hair from his head as he vomits. Water comes out of him. So much water.

“Okay,” a soothing voice says. “Okay, you’re okay. It’s okay. It’s all okay. I promise.”

He is no longer in the drowning pool. He is wet, but he is somewhere he has never seen before. All clear light and soft grass. Cool air against his wet skin.

He turns around and looks at the pool, horrified. Looks at his naked body and wails.

“Whoah!” the voice says again. “Whoah, hey, you’re okay. You’re okay!”

“Help me,” Castiel says. “Help me put these back on, and the crown, where’s the crown?” He tries to stand but he’s still so weak and so tired.

A man swims into his vision, holding him by the shoulders. “Calm down, you’ve just drowned, you need to take a deep breath.”

And Castiel stops moving and looks at him.

Bright green eyes. Tanned skin spattered with freckles like a spill across a page. Brown hair shot through with gold. An open face. A kind face.

“I was supposed to die,” Castiel explains. “Otherwise, what will make the fields fertile and the milk rich and the children strong?”

“Listen,” the man says gently, his voice strong, “you did drown. You’re dead.”

Castiel looks at him for a long time. “Oh,” he says. “Oh, good.”

The world slips away from him again.

He’s dry, the next time he wakes up. He’s in a broad house, a single huge room made of dark wood with a huge hearth and a bigger bed. It is thick and plush underneath him, bear furs on the bottom and thick blankets of wool on top. He is very warm and still so tired. He looks at the hearth for a long time, and then the man parts a skin aside from the door and walks inside, holding an armload of wood.

“Who are you?” Castiel asks. His voice is rough, scratched and damaged from the effort of drowning.

“Oh,” he says. “You’re awake.” He puts the wood down beside the hearth, where sparks cannot grab at it. “I’m Dean,” he says.

“Did you drown too?” he asks.

Dean shakes his head. “Almost, but not really. Are you hungry?” he asks.

“No,” Castiel answers. “Just tired.”

“The drugs they gave you must have done that,” Dean replies. “It should wear off soon enough.”

“Who are you?” Castiel asks again.

Dean sits at the edge of the bed. Watches as Castiel slips back under. “I’ll tell you when you wake up,” he answers. “Promise.”

There is a shallow bowl of tea next to the bed when he wakes up. A loaf of dark bread next to it. A not insubstantial pile of jam, too.

There is something written next to the food, but it is in a language Castiel cannot understand.

His limbs still shake as he bends over and grabs the tea. It is still hot, warm down to his growling stomach. It steadies him slightly and he pulls the bread into the bed with himself, sitting up and looking at the house all around.

In one corner, there is a great staff of dark wood. Atop it, a crown that looks almost exactly like his own, except it is woven of branches and punctuated with bright blossoms.

The man named Dean is curled up at the edge of the bed like a hunting hound, on top of the skins, his body pulled tight around itself. Castiel looks at him intently. There is something so familiar about him, but so strange and so distant.

He reaches out and touches his shoulder.

His eyes flash open and his hand grabs Castiel’s own, terrified.

He freezes and says, “I’m sorry. I’m not used to- to not being alone.”  
“Please,” Castiel says. “Who are you? Where am I?”

Dean sits up. Crosses his legs and leans into Castiel’s space. “You led them through the fields,” he says. “You led them through in the shroud and crown and then they placed you in the pool and you died. She told you it was for a god, that the god wanted blood. That the god has always wanted the blood and body of a pure one.”  
Castiel looks from Dean’s large, scarred hands to his face. His open, honest face.

“Someone had to make the god, a long time ago, and someone had to give to the god,” he continues. “I am what she made me. I was the first.”

Castiel looks into him. Asks, “Are you the god or the first sacrifice?”

“Both,” Dean answers.

 

 


End file.
